Auguste Bonaz in the Machine by The Creative Museum

The Industrial Revolution was built on the invention of new materials.
Machines allowed them to be mass produced into cheap products, quickly. The
exploitation of sweatshop laborers had a profound impact on society.
Plastic comb making was no exception.

In America, the most famous factory was in Leominster, Massachusetts. In
France, combs were made in Oyonnax, an administrative region of Ain, which
is located in the Rhône-Alpes. The town has a museum dedicated to comb
making and the plastics industry called the Musée du Peigne et des
Plastiques d’Oyonnax.

Auguste Bonaz, the most famous comb designer of the Art Deco period, had
his designs made there. He was one of the only artists who signed his
pieces.

Today, collectors think only about beauty, innovation, and geniuses carving
masterpieces with their own hands.

Starting in 1896, however, factory men and women sat for 16 hours a day in
front of hydroelectrically powered turning machines. Then the French
mechanic Humbert adapted the band saw, which allowed plastic combs to be
cut in patterns. In 1871, Lyon Vuillermoz invented a machine that enabled a
worker to punch the pattern into the plastic with a single stroke of the
arm.

This is what women polishing combs looked like.

From our Bonaz collection, here is some of the art that came out of their
labor on those machines.